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Published on: April 21, 2017
Daily steps offset risks of sedentary behavior in the All of Us research program
Neil S Zheng1, Shi Huang2, Jeffrey Annis3,4,5
1Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
Nature Communications
|April 7, 2026
Summary
Higher daily step counts can mitigate risks associated with sedentary behavior, but not fully offset them for all chronic diseases. Personalized recommendations should consider both activity and inactivity levels.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Preventive Medicine
- Digital Health
Background:
- Sedentary behavior is linked to increased mortality and chronic diseases.
- The potential protective effect of daily step counts against these risks is not fully understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if higher daily step counts can mitigate the health risks associated with prolonged sedentary time.
- To examine the association between sedentary behavior, daily steps, and incident chronic conditions.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of longitudinal sedentary and step data from Fitbit devices.
- Utilized data from the All of Us Research Program.
- Examined incident diagnoses of various chronic conditions.
Main Results:
- Greater sedentary time was associated with increased risk for obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease, COPD, depression, sleep apnea, and atrial fibrillation.
- Increasing daily steps (1700-5500 steps) partially offset the excess risk from high sedentary time (14 vs. 8 hours/day) for several conditions.
- No step count fully mitigated the risks for coronary artery disease or heart failure.
Conclusions:
- Daily step counts can partially offset the health risks of sedentary behavior.
- Personalized recommendations should integrate both sedentary time and daily step goals.
- Further research is needed to fully understand risk mitigation for specific cardiovascular conditions.
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